Online ordering is relatively new, but to date no one has been able to use the online ordering medium for its true potential. As people communicate more and more over internet mediums such as Instant Messaging (IM) and email, there are entire relationships that exist without the participants exchanging physical addresses for privacy and security reasons. So too, good friends remain in touch via email as they move around the country and the email address is replacing the physical address as the address of choice that is in the ready memory of many Americans. The inventor, for instance, does not know the physical address of his sister in Boston, his cousin in New York, or his high school friend in Palo Alto. Rather, he relies on email for contact. Absent this invention, the inventor would need to find out the physical addresses of these people if he wanted to send them gifts. Emailing his friend in Palo Alto requesting his address would alert the friend that he was going to receive something and spoil the surprise in addition to being inconvenient for both parties.
There has not been any way to send someone a gift, cash, or a charitable contribution in their name over the internet and without having to know their physical delivery information. Other solutions for this problem have included “wish lists” in which an ecommerce site (amazon.com for instance) allows people to browse and place items in a special area that a potential gift giver can view. However, the gift giver would still need to know where to ship the items to after purchasing them and thus would need to research a physical address.
Another problem is created through the inability of the recipient to schedule delivery. A giftgiver might know the physical address of a friend and send them flowers only to find out later that the friend was out of town that week and by the time she returned home the flowers had died. Until now, this has required that diligent gift givers check with their recipients ahead of time, again potentially ruining the surprise. Freight companies have attempted to solve this by leaving door knockers at residences if the recipient is out of town and rescheduling delivery upon a call from the recipient when he or she returns. This solution is not only inefficient for the freight company, but does not work in the case of a perishable gift like flowers.
Finally, there is the difficulty of sending money and conveyances of value online and offline. Checks can take several days to clear, and other forms of payments such as money orders and cash risk being lost in transit. No one has yet created a way to convey online payment information from one person to another person such that it can be redeemed without a merchant account or other form of relationship with a financial institution.